Performance conversations are a critical and necessary part of performance management. Feedback is most effective when it is constructive and when it involves a dialogue rather than a monologue, but people often struggle with this skill. This activity includes an experiential exercise that applies a five-part process for performance feedback,…

Employee empowerment yields positive outcomes for employees, managers, and organizations. Yet, too many employees feel disempowered at work, and managers, while wanting to empower employees, often do not know how. Contributing to this state of affairs is the lack of published, high-fidelity exercises explicitly designed to instruct students on how…

Business adopted a terminology of sustainability to defend, then justify, and finally explain practices that acknowledged resource limitations as inherent in the business environment. Tracing the rhetoric across a half century of business use demonstrates an expansion of the concept of sustainability to encompass managerial attention to finite…

This paper considers the case for reform of management structures in UK universities and offers proposals for change. The model of top-down, performance-led management that characterises many institutions is both outmoded and ill-suited to the challenges of an increasingly turbulent higher education sector. Drawing on the experiences of a…

This article presents the experiential, cross-curricular Gleam Lighting case exercise, which helps graduate students develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed to effectively work in a cross-functional team. In the exercise, students from two separate graduate accounting and human resource courses work together as a…

The changing meaning of work calls for care and concern for the spiritual dimension of the workplace. Toward this end, a more liberal form of workforce education and human resource development in response to workplace preparation for managers is needed.

It is well known that bullying and work-related stress are real issues. "Bullying Survey 2005" revealed a number of insights into bullying at work. Much of this is down to lack of managerial skills. Individuals who have previously not been recruited or trained as managers have become managers but without the necessary skills set to carry out their…

When teaching a services course (e.g., Services Marketing) it is essential that students understand that marketing/management, operations and human resource management within the service organization be fully coordinated. One useful acronym used to remind students of this need is "CHROME", standing for Communications, Human Resources,…

Market structure is an essential topic in economics and finance courses, including bank management as well as many other business school courses, for example marketing, human resources and strategic management. Instructors explain the virtues of perfect competition and the evils of monopoly along with alternative market models. Often conversations…

Replacement planning is a process of identifying short-term or long-term backups so that organizations have people who can assume responsibility for critical positions during emergencies. Individuals identified as "replacements" are not promised promotions; rather, they are prepared to the point where they can assume a critical position long…

A "diversity education dilemma" occurs when exposure to information concerning status hierarchies, related to demographic and other socially salient identity groups, reinforces those hierarchies in the classroom. Discussions of diversity-related issues in a variety of management courses (e.g., immigrant issues in labor relations, the composition…

Traditional leadership development programs for higher education staff are challenged to blend theory with a real-world context that is meaningful to participants' work. Standard student leadership curriculum is strong on theory, but often thin on providing this real-world context. Both HR training departments and academic units charged with…

The environmental threats humanity faces have led businesses to increasingly commit to improve their environmental performance and to increasing attempts to address environmental issues in management education. This article presents a matrix of (a) principles that can underlie and (b) attributes that can be generated by environmentally focused…

The transition to management is one of the most difficult challenges first-time managers face--almost half fail. First-time managers may experience disorienting dilemmas that trigger transformative learning. HRD (human resource development) practitioners can assist in reducing the failure rate of first-time managers when they better understand the…

The relatively recent development of comprehensive human resource information systems (HRIS) software has led to a large demand for technologically literate human resource (HR) professionals. For the college student who is about to begin the search for that first postcollege job, the need to develop technology literacy is even more necessary. To…